Socialism Does Not Work

Daniel Hannan debating at the Oxford Union on why socialism doesn't work. "How is it freedom to not have your daily bread, to not be able to go to reasonable school, to not have any opportunities to develop yourself as a young person, or even as an adult who wants to work but has not been given any?" . . . "If you want those opportunities, if you want decent schools, if you want a rise in living standards, will you go to North Korea or South Korea? Would you look to socialism to provide it, or would you look at the free market?" Source: OxfordUnion YouTube channel.

(see video below transcript)

Transcript

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, who said this: “I am a socialist. And a very different kind of socialist from your rich friend Count Reventlow.” It was 1930, and the speaker was a rising German politician called Adolf Hitler.

In 1930, the contention that fascism emerged out of socialism was accepted across the board. It was an observed historical fact. Fascists marched under red banners on May Day. Their leaders believed in high tariffs. In workers' control of factories. … In a moment ... In common production and distribution and exchange, as we just said...Go on!

Does the speaker agree that the first inmates of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany were communists and socialists?

Yea. And there was a reason why. It is absolutely true that socialists of National and Leninist varieties were bitterly opposed. They were fishing in the same pool. They were competing for the same kind of voter. The one kind of person that neither brand of socialism had any time for was a classical liberal. What they called the decadent Anglo-Saxon Bourgeois capitalists. Why? Because theirs was an ideology that elevated coercion over freedom.

Now, why do I begin with this Goodwin’s law, high stake opening? Two reasons. First of all, as a corrective. As a corrective to the self righteousness that we've already started hearing where people who claim to be socialist then start claiming credit for everything, from the extension of the franchise to the extension of universal education. But my real point is this one: socialism rests on compulsion. Its defining ethic is not equality but coercion. Socialism and capitalism are matrices, they are economic systems within which people can be generous or greedy. They can be selfish or altruistic. Human nature comes, whether from our genes or from our maker. It isn't something that's created by an economic system. But what's unique about socialism is the readiness of the state to deploy coercive force.

Now, we've evolved a great vocabulary to describe this. We talk about things like asking people to pay a bit more tax. See what happens if they choose not to. Behind all that polite sounding, asking them to pay their share to contribute, is the threat of prison. Of course, there are some occasions where any society will need to rely on coercive force. On incarceration. There are some taxes that are necessary in any system. We all accept that. But the use of coercive and ultimately lethal force by the state is its most awesome and awful power. We should tilt the balance as far as we can to liberty. Before using …oh, that power should be used as the prayer book of marriage, reverently, discreetly, advisably, soberly.

The idea that, as we've just heard from Katy, that those of us on this side are in favor of dog eat dog, if by dog eat dog you mean the desire for material improvement, that is a fundamental in human nature under all systems. You had it under the communist regimes, you had it under feudal regimes, but what is unique about capitalism is that it harnessed that ambition to a socially useful end. Under every other system devised by human intelligence, a group of people sat on top and the way to get rich was to suck up to those in power. Whether they were kings, or bishops, or commissars. We, uniquely in this country, we then exported it, came up with a system where you satisfied your ambition by serving the rest of your fellow citizens under the law. We channeled that desire for self improvement in a socially productive way. And that's why socialist countries are not just less wealthy than capitalist ones, but less free. That's the categorical difference between East Germany and West Germany. Between North Korea and South Korea. It's not just that socialism doesn't work in the sense that it fails to provide material advance, it doesn't work in that it takes away human dignity and civil rights, above all our freedom to make choices as autonomous individuals.

Yes Sir?

How is it freedom to not have your daily bread, to not be able to go to reasonable school, to not have any opportunities to develop yourself as a young person, or even as an adult who wants to work but has not been given any...?

Sure. Let's leave aside whether you mean positive or negative freedom. If you want those opportunities, if you want decent schools, if you want a rise in living standards, will you go to North Korea or South Korea? Would you look to socialism to provide it, or would you look at the free market?

It's an interesting thing. Karl Marx, who of course invented the thing, let's not gloss over that fact, Karl Marx thought that as time went by it would become more liberal, that he could take the constraints off that people wouldn't need to be told what to do. And like every other prediction that Karl Marx made, that was the opposite of the truth. Yes, extraordinary. Marxists uniquely claim that theirs is a scientific rather than a political doctrine. They claim that their truths are empirical. They are not just opinions. And yet every single forecast that Marx made, that there would be more and more unemployment under capitalism, that there'd be a smaller group of oligarchs and a large group of proletarians, every single one of them turned out to be the opposite of the truth.

I want to tackle one other thing. This idea...

Have you read Karl Marx?

Yes, of course I have. I had the pleasure like number of people here of studying at an old university where we were obliged to read these things...

This is gonna have to be my last one.

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the side of the proposition about what actual system we're talking about. First of all we are talking about social democracy in Britain as was in 60s and 70s which, oh, 50s and 60s and 70s, which I lived through and was the best time of my life, wonderful time...

I'm not sure this was a point of information?

Anyway, was also wonderful

Thank you.

Now, we are not …

No, we're using... thank you...

After socialism ...

… suggesting that national socialism, communism, some call socialism ...

Yes, we're the dictionary definition that was helpfully put before the house by my colleague Tony Daniels, when he explained what socialism means. Is the collective or state ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Now, that you know, if you have a quarrel with the authors of the Oxford English Dictionary, that's fine. But that seems to me a perfectly neutral definition to be used in this debate. Now, I want to take on the idea that …

… democracy to have …

There will be time later to express your viewpoints.

Thank you. I want to tackle this idea because it runs through the debate. That somehow on this side we are more materialistic, greedier, less humane, that we have less by way of fellow feeling and sympathy than those on the other side. If you contrast socialist and capitalist economies you see precious little evidence of that. But for what it is worth, I am a conservative politician; I spend a lot of my time with libertarians, conservatives, and free marketeers of every stripe; I can tell you, hand on heart, I have never met anyone who derived more pleasure from a healthy bank balance than from listening to Beethoven. Or playing with his children, or going for a walk in the country. But what is it that enables us to do those things? It's economic progress. The fact that you have a dishwasher, and don't have to spend all your time doing all your washing by hand, means you can go for that walk in the country. The fact that you bought a car and don't have to queue at the tram station, means you have more time to listen to Beethoven symphonies. The fact that you don't have to spend six weeks working just to feed your children, means you can spend the weekend playing with them. Ans where did those economic advances come from? From the system that unlocked the inventiveness of a creative people that tapped into the unlimited potential of human innovation, and that raised our species to a standard of living that a couple of generations ago would have been unimaginable.

That has happened for about a billion people in the world, those of us who can afford the car, those of us who can afford the dishwashers. There are 6 billion people … I'm sorry, I haven't any more time … There are 6 billion people who cannot afford the cars and the dishwashers, but they will. They will, as free exchange and specialization, and comparative advantage run their course raising people to a higher and higher standard of living. Unless, we go down the road of Cuba or Zimbabwe, or or any other socialist country. Because their socialism doesn't work. Don't make the mistake of judging socialism as a textbook theory, but judging capitalism by its necessarily imperfect outcomes. Judge like with like. In the real world, you find me a functioning socialist country that has delivered more than the free market alternative.

Now, I'm gonna finish with this point: Katy in her speech cited a number of the great heroes of our indigenous radical tradition. And among them are some of the greatest heroes to have lived or argued in any language. She cited the Levellers. Three of whom fell in Burford church in an act of cold blooded execution which disturbed even the morbid sensibilities of mid 17^th century England. What was it that the Levellers, those far sighted heroic men, who looked forward to the universal franchise, who looked forward to something that we would now recognize as constitutional liberty and democracy under the rule of law, what was it that they believed? What was the starting point of their ideology? What was it that Richard Overton argued for in his arrow against all tyrants? Self ownership! He began by saying “I own my mind, I own my body, and if I am free to trade the products of my own labor, then without the intervention of prelets or princes, then I would be fulfilled and happy.”

These were proto-libertarians. They were radicals, alright. But they understood that freedom was linked as they've constantly said in the very paper that Katy quoted that liberty and propriety, ownership and freedom, were inextricably linked.

Let me close with some words of their great contemporary, another libertarian hero John Milton. Capitalism, this thing that raised our species, developed in some of the Italian northern city states, was then refined by the Dutch, but it was in this country that it reached its fullest flower and was exported. Addressing the Lords and Commons in 1644, Milton said: “remember what nation it is whereof ye are. A nation not slow and dull but quick and piercing of wit.” We got the whole thing going. And we ended slavery, and we exported property rights, and we exported the rule of law, and it was all based on raising the individual above the state, rather than the other way around. When you walk out of the doors tonight, vote for freedom, and remember what nation it is whereof ye are.
 

Translated by Jadranko Brkic